Some first gameplay impressions (5 sessions)

The past week I have been playing 5 games with 4 pre-made decks to test the feel of the game (so no drafts).You can only do so much theorycrafting - but when put to the test it's always different than you think!!!

So here's some experiences I'd like to share:

1. We often waited quite a number of turns before engaging. Both sides usually collected a big pile of cards (10+) before moving. Often people skipped their turn to draw an extra card. Not sure if this was the intended thing to do - but very often it has no use moving one unit into enemy territory without being able to activate it again - because it gets slaughtered in no time by everything in range. And AoW cards are ALWAYS in short supply so you'd rather save up ACs first.

2. Movement. Benoit mentioned somewhere that movement bonus is very important. I can now see that this is very true. Movement 1 units are very, very sluggish. Spending an AC to just move/sprint a unit feels like a waste if you can also move + attack for 1 AC. In our experience, units with 2 movement proved to be much more useful, let alone units with 3 movement. Also ranged units are regarded as useful. Hephaestos is a very slow God that really crawls across the board. Flying units with movement 3 are very useful and versatile: the Caucasian Eagle is regarded among the top 3 best units for its RP. Other highly valued/feared units: Chimera, Lycaon, Gryphon and Basilisk.

3. Gods aren't as strong as I thought. Without support they're quite easy to kill. Artemis is outright flimsy without any defense bonus and no block - meaning 7 defense against a Torment attacker. It took 2 turns to kill her by two 2RP units (Eagle and Lycaon). Hephaestos, Apollo and Hera are significantly tougher (but still not that hard to kill). Two of our games ended in a God kill and in another game one God has 1 hp left.

4. Extra Defense is stronger than extra Attack. And Torment is about the best talent in the game. An attack lets you throw one extra dice - but one less defense gives all exploding dice ("5s") an extra 17% chance to inflict a wound. Which is very, very significant.

5. Troops. Thus far Troops proved to be very underwhelming - even though they saved Artemis from a certain death in one game. Often a Troops attack did 0 damage. Most are slow. When they suffer 1 or 2 damage they are as good as useless as they immediately lose their talents and phalanx ability (and often mass effect +1 power as well) and aren't really worth activating anymore. As AoW cards are usually rare and very much in demand recalling Troops is usually at the bottom of the priority list (until far into the game when you get Omphalos cards and dead unit cards to use as AoW). We tried a deck without Troops and it works just fine. A pity so many units have Troops specific talents.

6. Avoid being in a full province with just your own troops as much as possible. Not only are you susceptable to area attacks, another penalty is that while enemies with 0 range can attack you, your units with range 0 can't attack outside their area. This can be very painful; in one game Hera was in a (2) province with her Guard (Colchidan Dragon) but she ran out of Activation Cards with 50% of her deck still being unused.

7. Units that come with their own specific Troops (Hephaestos, Artemis, Arachne) are a logistical nightmare. Once they start moving it's almost impossible to keep them together and enjoy their mutual bonusses.

8. AoW cards. You need them. Taking Sisyphus just for the AoW cards and not using him in the game (just lay his AC aside when you draw one) is a very viable tactic.

9. (added) It feels very odd that after spending all of a unit's ACs, it is sidelined until the next deck shuffle. You can also take advantage of that when you know your opponent can't do anything with a unit before the next shufle and that unit becomes a defenseless sitting duck.

Last edited by Teowulff on 3rd January 2017, 1:43 pm; edited 1 time in total

1. you can all wait to have a full hand before stating playing but maybe you missing the point. If one of the player start moving, the other may have to move too. it depends on your playing style. Mine is to optimize movement and actions.

2. i agree ! as many bordgames the move stat is one the most important to manage a game.

3. compared to some monsters or heroes, some gods are not so strong, and its a good thing then you need to play you entire army to be the most efficient.

4. good point !! you right because offense is an active roll and defense is a passive stat. you can have a bad roll but 1 point of defense is really there. then Torment is very efficient to take down a big target.

5. i think the role of troops is more tactic. troops help you to manage parts of the game , their first goal is not to fight for the majority. They are cheap in DP so you can draft some for your deck or to use them on the board. Many uses of them. we have to try all the possibilities.

6. im not sure i understand here. maybe i will do it during playing game.

7. it s depends on your tactic. You right, all the units have different stats and we have to manage with that.

8. Absolutely AoW cards are very important and usefull.

very intersting post Teowulff. go on posting feedback of your test games please, its very usefull

Waiting is someting good, but if your opponent ENTER in, you should be carefull and don't wait too long to ENTER too, he could take omphalos really fast and place their units in a GOOD PLACE before you. Try to play with a guy who ENTER faster and you ll see =))I already win a game ABSORBING 4 Omphalos but loosing 1 Hero and 1 Monster, and a God in difficult position. But the goal was not to fight but staying alive and ABSORB faster than my opponent. (and the Opponent got Heracles too Throwing everything on me. =))

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2. Movement

RUN is a nice option to go directly to the farest Omphalos when there are no ennemy arround. The you come back faster too. This could force your opponent to come too. And some other good point is to place this unit to the front to break LoS.

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4. Defence

Now you see the power of Echo against high Def units =))

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5. Troop

I agree, Troop could be a bit more powerfull if they didn't loose their Talents when they are not complet.

But they are still good to :- Break line of sight and enemy movement on the front- Be recall after a God movement if they got some nice Talent and if God need Troop to get their Talent. (Guard and MT are nice too)- RUN to take Omphalos and come back (this mean to get the 3 troop cards. 1 to ENTER and 2 other to go and come back the next turn.)- I often do at least 1 damage against monsters, heros, or Gods. And 1 vitality less on those units are always welcome. (except hydra, Lycaon, and other regenerate units or preventing wound after fighting units)

Thanks Teowulff! It's always more useful to have feedback based on games than theory. Hope you had fun too!

To take your points and Minifred's replies in order:

1) Sounds like you play a gentler game than we do. Whenever I've played we've collectively had quite an aggressive game, with not much in the way of pauses for building up. That's neither right nor wrong, but as Minifred says, if one player goes for it the others probably need to follow. But that's tactics

2) Movement is very important. Running is far more useful than it seems on paper. But Movement 1 units are far from useless. I've won more than one game with Achilles...

3) The gods have fallen a long way from their true immortal state, and are indeed, relatively easy kills. That's why they have an army to protect them. And that fragility makes for far more interesting games as you need to use everything you've got in combination, not just a single unit. So you had 2 kill victories, and 2 omphalos victories? A nice balance

4) Agreed - Torment is very good, and a high defence is always there for you.

5) Troops are the hardest units to use, and work far better with some units than others. Several Heroes can get a lot of value from them, and I know some players use them very well. For example, you get more from both Odysseus and Leonidas if they are working alongside a unit or two of troops. And you shouldn't ignore recall. It not only moves a unit of troops to your god, but restores them to full strength. I've seen that save many a god, and sometimes it's only that one turn extra survival they need to win. On top of that, they can usually knock a point off most units in combat, and it all adds up...

Personally I am not great with troops, but I've been on the wrong end of them often enough to understand there's a lot of potential there

6) This is one of the nice points of balance that's engineered into the game: you want to band together in the same area for mutual support (Bolster, Phalanx, Guard, etc), but you don't want to clump up because you make such good targets for area attacks. It's a case of balancing risk and reward.

7) That can be true. And this is another point of choice. They are often good value, but difficult to get their optimal value brings them back down again. It does depend a lot on what sort of plan you have though. If these units are required to romp all over the board then keeping them together will be very tricky. If you're expecting them to dig in somewhere then that's far easier to arrange.

AoW cards are very important, but each one is less important than the previous when you're building a deck. If you've got 4, then adding another is worth more than if you've already got 10. This makes the relative value of different units to different players change as the draft goes on, which I find rather interesting.

1. Sorry if my wording caused some confusion (I'm not native english either ;-). What I meant is that after deployment we generally waited with attacking or running towards Omphalos. Of course that may differ per army or tactic but we generally had a lot of ranged units (Artemis, Chiron, Toxotai, Paris to name a few), Arachne (who can web you in place for a turn or two), the Basilisk and quite some fast and flying units in our armies. Making a dash for that Omphalos is a lot more tricky in those circumstances than when your opponent hardly has any fast and/or ranged units.

2. Run is a very good addition to the game, fully agreed. We had a run towards an Omphalos (Arachne's Spiders), Ajax ran towards the enemy and I ran my Basilisk towards the ememy God, which lay the base for killing her as petrifying the next round turned off the Gryphon's Guard talent as Hera's Perfidious power. Petrify may cost 2 AoW but it is VERY strong when used correctly.But good to see we all agree that good movement is very strong (and subsequently: slowness is quite a handicap).

4. Echo ftw! ;-)Next game I'll try out more defensive boosts like Eurytheus + Talos, for example. Guards are very good to have.

5+7. Troops. Yes they have their uses - but it may take some practice to really optimize their abilities. I definitely haven't arrived at that point yet! ;-)Overall I am not really happy with them and I must say using a few 2RP units seems a lot more effcient:-. Troops usually don't operate very well with their boosters a. Troops don't get a free movement to walk along with your units ("move as one"), may not be able to climb or haven't got movement >1 like your Leader/bolster/phalanx unit so when moving they lose their bolster bonus and the heroes/Gods lose their Phalanx bonus and Leader use. It all requires a lot of micromanagement.b. Troops that come "free" with other units (Arachne, Artemis, Hephaestus) aren't summoned together with their "masters" so while the one may already be moving around the board you are still waiting for the other to be summoned. Again, a lot of micromanagement.c. Although the Leader talent may allow you to search for a Troops card, no Troop may be summoned yet. Will that cause you not to activate a Leader without Troops being around or must you first wait until you draw a Troops cand so you can finally deploy one in the first place? Because searching for a Troops card isn't really a good way to use your AoW.

-. Unreliable talentsa. Even if not destroyed, a Troops unit loses all its talents (like Guard) when they lose even a single model;b. A unit with Phalanx loses the bonus when the nearby Troops unit loses only one of its models, even if they start with 7.

-. Troops add Activation Cards to your decka. Your average card draw gets weaker. Each troop adds 3 AC to your deck. I played a deck with Artemis, Arachne and Toxotai, which adds 9 Troops cards to your deck. Which sometimes turns out to be frustrating: you draw a lot less strong unit AC or AoW cards. Often you just draw a Troops card or even 2 in succession - which is really a bit meh if you want to move on with your strong units or deperately need that AoW card. It makes your gameplay more sluggish.b. Watering down your AoW supply. All these Troops cards decrease the relative number of AoW cards. With 3 troops in your army, the amount of AoW cards is reduced from say 1:4 to 1:6. Which really slows down your army a lot, even if you have an occasional Leader activation (which AC you will draw far less often the more Troops you have)

-. Troops are very weak and limiteda. They are often weak to the point that a Troops attack does 0 damage, I've had it happen very regularly in my sessions. b. Let's face it, a good area attack or strong opponent will insta-destroy most troops, boosted or not. c. You may recall them - but for 1 AoW card, which often isn't worth it if you can activate another big unit or do an extra area attack instead.d. Some units even have a "destroy all troops in the area" (or even adjacent area) power. Also not really encouraging.

Last edited by Teowulff on 3rd January 2017, 3:07 pm; edited 2 times in total

@Teowulff - "Destroy all troops in the area" is, IIRC, only on Petrify.

As I said before, I'm not personally very good with troops, but I've watched other people use them to great effect.

@Cryocat - I've not tried this myself. Why don't you have a go and see how it works out? From my experience playing against people who can use troops well, they already seem like a good deal for 1RP. No other units have a built-in resurrection for the low-low price of only 1 AoW

Concerning troops, my major concern comes with the guard talent... Whenever a unit performs a zone attack, guard becomes useless : you only have to target the troop first to eliminate their guard ability... And there are many units performing zone attacks. Couldn't they keep this particular talent during the whole turn as long as they are complete at the begining of the attack ?

Concerning troops, my major concern comes with the guard talent... Whenever a unit performs a zone attack, guard becomes useless : you only have to target the troop first to eliminate their guard ability... And there are many units performing zone attacks. Couldn't they keep this particular talent during the whole turn as long as they are complete at the begining of the attack ?

This could be nice =))But the unit must stay alive to do this.

But then Guard will be powerfull and the other Talent not so usefull.

Siren are nice cause they still sing even with less Siren on the Troop =)

Concerning troops, my major concern comes with the guard talent... Whenever a unit performs a zone attack, guard becomes useless : you only have to target the troop first to eliminate their guard ability... And there are many units performing zone attacks. Couldn't they keep this particular talent during the whole turn as long as they are complete at the begining of the attack ?

This is a good idea and if retained I think this would be interesting to extend your idea to all talents. It makes no exception to a rule, and makes troops more interesting (counter-attacking with a wounded troop with the Mighty Throw talent, for example)(but I feel there are not so much cases).

Leaving troops with their talents at all times makes them too good for 1RP.

I think the issue here is that they are hard to use well, rather than that they are not good at all. When I last played against someone who knew what he was doing with them, a couple of units of well-handled units troops almost cost me the game.

@Teowulff - "Destroy all troops in the area" is, IIRC, only on Petrify.

You forgot:Minos - tribute of MinosCicre - metamorphosis *poof* and no more Troops

Ken wrote:

Now that we play correctly, troops are pretty underwhelming. They are more trouble than they are worth, especially trying to make use out of the Leader talent.

100% agreed. If only Troops would keep their Phalanx bonus it would already be better .. or anything to make them more viable. Like .. recalling them with an Activation Card?But then again, perhaps we are all doing it wrong?

As it is now though, I'd rather have my heroes have Close Protection, which is far easier to use and far more reliable.Especially on units that have Phalanx plus another attack buff, like Diomedes. Give him the same talents as Eurysteus.

Voice of Olympus wrote:

No other units have a built-in resurrection for the low-low price of only 1 AoW

When I first played, I thought troops were fairly weak. What convinced me otherwise was playing against them when they were used by someone who got the best out of them. That made me think they were bordering on too cheap. But as I say, I find them hard to use myself. But I'm learning

Yes indeed. I wonder which relative weights Benoit has put on the talents. Things like Initiative and Mobility are close to worthless on most units. Torment is absolutely great.

Voice of Olympus wrote:

When I first played, I thought troops were fairly weak. What convinced me otherwise was playing against them when they were used by someone who got the best out of them. That made me think they were bordering on too cheap. But as I say, I find them hard to use myself. But I'm learning

Yes - and the metagame has changed a lot with so many new units and powers. Not sure if most of the testing ands evaluating has been done with the core box in mind - but we have way more alternatives for these last RP now. And some new units that are very good to counter Troops. Or replace them, like the new 1RP heroes.

When the game is released I am very curious what the final judgement on Troops will be.In any case I imagine ranged troops or fast flyers or Sirens may still have some specific uses. With these Troops I have the most positive experiences.Too bad many of them are KSE units (Toxotai, Stymphalian Birds, Artillerymen).

Voice of Olympus wrote:

Petrified gods can recall troops.

So .. "recall" is also a "detrimental" Power that all Gods have, so to speak?

I've been following this debate on troops and it seems some find them really underwhelming.

I've done only a single demo game, so my experience isn't helping at all here but still, wanted to throw this idea out:

How about letting the troops keep their talents when above half health (rounded up or down)?It's not as drastic a change as letting them keep them all the time, but still make them better for longer.Recall would still be of great use to restore health of troops below 50%, and troops wouldn't loose all talents and the slightest hit, they would still have a chance to keep special abilities.

I too found troops disappointingly underwhelming. I'm okay with them not really being able to kill stuff (puny mortals!), but I do think they should be more useful. I think coordination of troops is the main issue. I propose the following buffs combination for consideration:

a) When using the 'deploy on the board' special action, troops may deploy to the location of a god (and maybe on other units too) instead of the edge of the board. So basically you can rally them using an Art of War card, or you do the equivalent of a rally by using an activation. This would make positioning them and then using them WAY easier. It would also let you 'rally' by using an activation and activation card (which are precious too) instead of using an art of war card.b) Leader allows you to search your deck OR discard pile to get an activation card. This way you'd always get a card, making the troops easier to use. I found leader to be a bit useless once I drew and used troop cards.c) When discarding an AoW card to rally troops, you can choose to put them either at a god or a character with leader.

I too found troops disappointingly underwhelming. I'm okay with them not really being able to kill stuff (puny mortals!), but I do think they should be more useful. I think coordination of troops is the main issue. I propose the following buffs combination for consideration:

a) When using the 'deploy on the board' special action, troops may deploy to the location of a god (and maybe on other units too) instead of the edge of the board. So basically you can rally them using an Art of War card, or you do the equivalent of a rally by using an activation. This would make positioning them and then using them WAY easier. It would also let you 'rally' by using an activation and activation card (which are precious too) instead of using an art of war card.b) Leader allows you to search your deck OR discard pile to get an activation card. This way you'd always get a card, making the troops easier to use. I found leader to be a bit useless once I drew and used troop cards.c) When discarding an AoW card to rally troops, you can choose to put them either at a god or a character with leader.

+1 i like those rules too =)

I would change the SEARCH tactics too. You could SEARCH your Deck OR your Discard Pile. That would be nice when you got emmergency (moving god or other)